The '582 patent discloses a corrugated paperboard pallet. This corrugated pallet is produced by nesting and gluing together a top and bottom panel, each of which has struts that have been glued together. A corrugated pallet of the '582 patent can be constructed by manually folding and gluing the top and bottom panels to form the struts, and then gluing the top and bottom panels together to form the corrugated pallet. This operation is labor intensive and difficult.
It is an object of this invention to develop an automatic machine and method for automatically folding struts in a corrugated blank and gluing them together to form the top and bottom panels of the corrugated pallet of the '582 patent. The corrugated pallet of the '582 patent has a flat elevated surface to support a load a sufficient distance from the floor to permit the forks of a forklift to be inserted into openings between the top and bottom panels so that the pallet with the load can be moved from place to place.